


No Warning

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Series: Gaps in Canon [9]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Dario Is A Mess (The Great Library), During Canon, Gen, Guilt, Revenge, Seasickness, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Vomiting, What-If, and so is Santi let's be fair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: In Smoke and Iron canon, Khalila persuades Santi's good sense to overcome his blind fury over Dario's part in Wolfe's re-imprisonment.But what if she hadn't?A violent, emotional little 'What-if?' fic.
Series: Gaps in Canon [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1318670
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Volume Two - May Event for The Great Library





	No Warning

**Author's Note:**

> _"... They overturned the table, because there were no winning moves. As a military man, you know that - sometimes - it's the only option!"_
> 
> _He didn't like it. She watched the blind fury struggle against his good sense, and finally he slammed the heel of his hand hard into the steel bulkhead beside her and wheeled away to put his back to her. When he finally faced her again, he was more composed._
> 
> Smoke and Iron, chapter 4.
> 
> Fulfils the "Sea Journey" prompt for the May collection.

Santi watched Khalila walk out of his room. Off to find Anit, to talk to her, to try and persuade her.

If anyone could do that, it would be Khalila. Santi could tell she had no idea of how remarkable she was. 

However, she wasn’t flawless.

She’d managed to grudgingly make him see the rationale behind Jess and Dario’s plan - the necessity of it. Even the fact that Chris would probably have agreed.

And yet she’d not even _tried_ to persuade him that it had been necessary _not to tell Chris_. 

Perhaps she knew, as did he, that there could be no excuse for a betrayal that deep. 

So he waited for several minutes after she’d left, to ensure she was well away, and then got to his feet. 

He managed to make it to Dario and Thomas’ room without being spotted by the crew. He’d given Anit’s men a lot of trouble while they were all being loaded onto the ship. Doubtless there were many sailors who’d be happy to return the favour. 

The thought was tempting. The need for a good, cathartic brawl itched under his skin. But his violence had a different target and a different intention. 

He hadn’t thought about the fact that Thomas might be in the room too, but luck was on his side in this, if nothing else. When he opened the door, Dario was alone in the vomit-stinking room. 

Curled up in bed, looking pathetic. 

Far from cooling Santi’s rage, that lit the match underneath it. How dare he, when Chris was … His mind shied away from all the terrible possibilities.

In the space of a blink he was looming over the bed. Dario looked up at him with resignation, an expression that Santi immediately wanted to wipe straight off his face. He didn’t want one iota of this to sit comfortably with the little shit.

“You didn’t warn him.” He grabbed Dario and hurled him off the bed. Dario fell to the floor like a bag of wet sand. 

“I know.” He turned his pallid face to meet Santi’s gaze. “We couldn’t risk you refusing to let him go.”

 _Chris is very good at not telling me things_ , he wanted to say, _and I have rarely been capable of refusing him anything he is set on_ , but Dario had lost the right to know that sort of relationship detail.

He needed not to mark the boy to keep Khalila in the dark.

He kicked Dario in the thigh and watched him wince. “Absolutely no consideration of Chris at all, then. Only how it might affect your god-damned plan." 

Dario looked up at him with wide, brimming eyes and Santi kicked him again to try and make the fucking god-damned crocodile tears go away.

"I assume that was your idea. Jess should have known better. He knows more of what you just sent Chris back to.”

 _That_ shifted Dario's expression back to a familiar one: offense. “I know some of it! I saw … I saw Thomas’ cell too, you know!”

He’d changed his mind at the last minute, there. Still hiding something, then. Santi wasn’t even surprised. He dragged Dario to his feet and shoved him hard against the wall. Dario’s breaths came ragged and fast in the otherwise silent room. 

Frightened, underneath that veneer of resignation. 

Good. 

“You,” he growled into Dario’s ear, “have no _fucking idea_ what you’ve just done to Chris. _None_.”

A memory of Chris, broken and bleeding and wordless, flashed into his mind with intrusive clarity. He blinked it away only to find a tear halfway down his cheek and his knee digging brutally into the back of Dario’s thigh.

“Tell me, _stronzo_ , is there a plan for Chris, once he’s there? Has Jess got a way to communicate with him?”

As Santi spoke, the ship rolled again. He rode the movement easily, but Dario retched and gagged. Rather than pull away, Santi leaned further in, squashing Dario's heaving chest against the wall. 

“Was he just your fucking sacrificial goat, Dario?”

No answer. They really had, hadn't they? They'd not just sent back Chris unprepared, they'd sent him back with no purpose.

Suffer and break and we'll see if Jess fucking Brightwell can figure something out before Chris _dies_. 

The urge to punch Dario, and keep punching, was so strong that Santi had to tuck his fists into his pockets. He couldn't breathe at all for a moment, and when he succeeded it snagged in his chest like a hook. 

“That sounds like a 'you' part of the plan," he said at last. His heartbeat throbbed in his very fingertips. "Pushing others into harm’s way while you sit in safety. Very noble.”

Dario tried to speak but couldn’t. His face was reddening. Santi threw him to the floor again, not even giving a shit if Dario wasn't capable of catching himself with his hands.

He watched with a malignant, burning sort of satisfaction as Dario frantically hacked up the vomit that was choking him. 

Finally there was a hint of anger in Dario’s dark eyes as he raised them towards Santi again. “There was no other choice.” His voice was thin and raspy, and he stopped to cough again and spit something yellow onto the floor. “Wolfe and Morgan would have been taken regardless.”

Morgan. Santi had somehow managed to utterly forget about Morgan. 

She’d be fine. Chris wouldn’t. 

“We controlled what we could,” Dario continued. “I would have given _anything_ -”

“Would you?” Santi heard his own voice, light and friendly. “Anything, Dario Santiago? I wonder, would you have given your beloved Khalila to the tender mercies of the Library, if Jess had told you it was the only option?”

“Leave her out of this.” Dario sat up and then, to Santi's surprise, staggered to his feet. He could barely keep his balance on the gently rocking boards.

Santi laughed, even though every heave of his chest felt like lifting a rock. “You’re right. I already know what you’d do to protect Khalila. You’ve already proved that.”

Yes, he should have known. Jess was still a shock, but he should have known Dario would have felt no qualms about throwing Chris back into hell again. 

He remembered that moment in the Iron Tower where Dario had stepped out to betray them, remembered Chris’ eyes dimming with the realisation as if his soul was already preparing to leave his body. 

He'd been close enough to Chris to see that happening again, when Bren- _Jess_ had grabbed him. That terrible, lightless look. 

Not close enough to help. Not even close enough to take revenge properly.

A thought hit him, clear like a bell in his rage-reddened, guilty mind.

Call it a strategic question. 

He shoved Dario back to the floor then dropped to his knees and grabbed Dario’s collar, yanking it tight. “Are we walking into another trap? Are you selling us to Spain so that you and Khalila can be safe?”

Dario shook his head as best he could with Santi's grip on his throat. “No. I promise. I swear. On Khalila’s life, I swear.”

If he couldn't protect Chris from his worst nightmare, why the _fuck_ should Dario get to even imagine he could protect Khalila?

“On Khalila’s life.” Santi chuckled and pulled Dario up on to his elbows by hauling at his collar. “I’d watch that habit, if I were you. Your little girlfriend’s life is not under your control.”

“I proposed to her, actually.”

Santi blinked. “I don’t give a fuck.” He got to his feet and shoved Dario with his foot, just to see how far the boy would skid over the splintered floorboards before he could brace himself. “I might have cared before, for Khalila’s happiness, because she is one of the most astonishing people I’ve ever known. But now?” 

He swung away, saw the sick bucket, half full, and threw it at Dario with all the viciousness welling up inside him. More tears fell down his face. “I’m fucking sick of the lot of you. I wish I’d killed Jess to stop him doing it. I’d sell every single one of you to the Archivist if only it would save Chris.”

The sentence reverberated through his bones and sickened him, but one single moment dwelling on Chris’ fate persuaded him that he was right. 

Dario wiped weakly at the half-congealed vomit dripping down his face and neck and nodded, as if Santi had said nothing remarkable at all. 

Oh, no. Oh, _fuck_ no. Santi wasn’t having that. Santi wasn’t for one fucking second having Dario believe that they were the same. How _dare_ Dario measure his and Khalila's scant months together against Chris and Santi's half a lifetime and conclude there was anything near parity? How _dare_ he?

”-me, if you want.”

“What?”

“If we discover that Wolfe is dead, you can kill me, if you want.”

Santi walked over to Dario’s bed and sat down on it, because that had made his legs go wobbly. “ _What_?”

Dario shrugged. “Seems fair.” He gagged, wretchedly, as the ship tilted a little, but nothing emerged. He sat up and stared in Santi’s direction, though not quite at his face. He looked very small in that position. “I think they’re both going to die. Jess and Wolfe. And maybe I _could_ have done something to stop it, something that just didn’t come to mind in time. So. It seems … fair.” 

Santi shoved himself back to his feet. He couldn’t sit through this unbearable self-pitying nonsense. How did Dario end up twisting everything into being about Dario? “Oh, shut up. I’m not going to kill you.”

He paced the small cabin in three strides and back. The urge to hit Dario seemed to have passed.

He stood and grabbed a towel from where someone - definitely not Dario - had left it neatly folded over the foot-board of Dario's bunk. When he threw it at Dario, the boy flinched away. That was both satisfying and guilt-inducing at once. He was used to living with varying degrees of guilt gnawing him like an ulcer. What was a drop more?

He waited until Dario had cleaned his filthy face and hair and lost a little of the terrified tension in his shoulders. 

"I'm not going to kill you," he repeated, nice and calmly. "If Chris is dead, Santiago, I want you to live the rest of your life knowing that _you caused it_."

Dario took the barb as Santi had intended, wide-eyed and hands twitching as if to cover a wound in his chest. But then he squared his shoulders and met Santi's eyes again and said,

"Yes," with that same resignation that had enraged Santi when he first stepped inside this stinking room. 

Santi couldn't spend another second in here anymore. He swung on his heel and marched away.

By some miracle, he didn't run into a single soul on the way back to his room. He barely remembered the route.

 _That was pointless and self-indulgent and immoral_ , said the voice in his head that had grown to sound like Chris over the years.

 _Well_ , he told himself, wishing he was actually arguing with Chris, _better now than if we get to Spain_. _Got it out my system, didn't I?_

Inner Chris didn't even bother responding with disdain to that pathetic defence, just reminded him again how small and sick and guilty Dario had looked. How he hadn't even attempted to fight back.

"Yeah. All right." He flung himself backwards onto the bed and stared grimly at the stained ceiling.

All that posturing to Dario, when quite frankly, if Chris was dead, Santi would kill himself just as soon as he'd taken what revenge he could. 

The suicidal thought wasn't his usual purview, but he’d been worrying at the idea ever since Chris had been torn away from him and now it was so raw that it sliced his soul like a dagger.

The only thing stopping him was hope that Chris could still be saved. 

And for that, he had to stop being a fucked-up irrational bastard, didn't he?

He closed his eyes and pressed the bruised heels of his hands into his eyelids until psychedelic colours swirled, and sighed so deeply that his lungs strained.

Had to hope that Dario wouldn't tell Khalila - didn't think he would, the boy was half-mad with guilt just like Santi. Had to hope that Khalila's plan would work. 

Had to trust in Chris' motley children who just kept achieving the impossible.

Well. Maybe he could do that.

**Author's Note:**

> You might be thinking that Santi's being ridiculous and Dario is accepting far more of the guilt than is rightfully his. You are correct on both counts. 
> 
> I have a Great Library tumblr [here](https://thegreatlibraryfangirl.tumblr.com/) , please come and say hi!


End file.
